The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri

By Richard Lacayo and Lev Grossman

A bittersweet, quietly poignant account of a Bengali couple who immigrate to chilly Massachusetts, and of their son's efforts to navigate between his two lives as an Indian and American. Lahiri's crystalline prose captures the rhythms of experience with astonishing vividness, and the joy, sadness and confusion of a life lived in exile.